Graeme Gibson - Communion
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- Название:Communion
- Автор:
- Издательство:House of Anansi Press Inc.
- Жанр:
- Год:2012
- Город:Toronto
- ISBN:978-1-77089-346-7
- Рейтинг книги:5 / 5. Голосов: 1
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Communion: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Communion»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.
The narration proceeds in haunting rhythms which make it mesmerizing reading. By the end, they rise to a harrowing and purgative intensity.
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“Just a minute . . . No matter how we tried it had to break out somewhere.” He goes to stand by the window. Shadows at the end of her garden, the sound of a train on the bridge. Everything is dirty, seedy from winter. His hands have no strength. Her voice is matter-of-fact: “I don’t know why I did it . . . when he said goodnight I hit him across the mouth with my hand . . . why would I do that? I didn’t know him, I hadn’t even spoken to him . . . ” He turns from the window, raises his hand as if he has something to say and discovers that he doesn’t. He stops in mid-gesture. Immediately it’s clear that she’s seen him, she expects him to continue, she waits . . . “Why would I do that?”

He left early to beat the traffic but it didn’t work, he’s never seen so many cars: caked with salt and dirt they creep, wait . . . As he approaches the expressway traffic thins out, they begin to move faster, Felix cuts from one lane to the other, he curses stupid drivers, air bursts at the windows and the husky shifts in its cage unhappily: he switches on the wipers because transports, speeding cars hurl dirty water on his windshield, his hands are sweating, he holds the wheel lightly and doesn’t think.
North on the airport road. The animal’s body curling in on itself behind him. It whimpers as if dreaming. Small factories on either side of the road and ugly subdivisions. Indian Line to highway 50. He turns on the radio. Across from the race track a tree full of starlings, thousands of them crowded in its spiky branches, their mottled bodies ragged in the wind. He can hear them as he passes.
Into the Humber River valley at Bolton, rising north-west to Palgrave where the snow begins again, west on 9 to Ballycroy, villages year after year in drifted snow: a woman in Palgrave raped and murdered in her bedroom, within months another, in another town and her eight-year-old daughter heard it. He turns on his lights and smokes another cigarette.
Orangeville, then north through Camilla with the pale headlights of approaching cars, Primrose, Horning’s Mills, driving back into winter, the sky grows pale, then dark between metallic clouds and the horizon. Farms are farther apart now, their front doors sealed for winter and trees crowd to the highway’s edge; the beams of his headlights thicken with blowing snow. The dog hasn’t made a sound for over an hour. He’ll turn from the highway, he’ll drive on concession roads to a place he knows, past an empty farmhouse with one apple tree, he’s been in the house, he’s heard her snowboots on the stairs, heard their voices echoing through its rooms . . .
The highway has been rising imperceptibly from the lakeshore, he doesn’t know how far, perhaps a thousand feet, so that after he leaves it the road lurches unpredictably into ravines, hills swell beneath him, he knows the land drops sharply to Georgian Bay just beyond a particular clearing by a heavy stand of evergreens. He turns halfway to the dog, he speaks to it. There’s no response, at least he doesn’t hear anything and it’s too dark to see: he begins to talk, he explains, encourages, rhythmically the wipers thump, he’s driving automatically, he knows what he’s doing, he’s soothing the dog, he’s turning left, in a little while he’ll turn right again: he passes houses without lights clustered at crossroads. The hills become longer, steeper, until he reaches the plateau: the wind is blowing from west to east across the road, they pass the farm, he can’t tell if it’s still empty, it hasn’t mattered for a long time, he hardly looks at it. He continues past the shell of a building, an abandoned schoolhouse, perhaps it’s a deconsecrated church. One wall has crumbled away, the roof has gone, the windows are empty and snow drifts high on the inner walls. He stops the car and turns off the engine. He zips the coat tightly under his chin, he pulls his woollen hat down over his ears, puts on his leather mitts and gets out. The wind abates. Fine particles of snow lift from the edge of drifts above the road, they powder his cheeks as he stands, but even that ceases; an immense stillness engulfs him, pale stars emerge in the evening sky, the field shimmers between them and the trees. Eventually he walks around the car and opens the door.
The husky is unwilling to come out of its cage. Felix understands that, the animal’s confused, disoriented by the drive, it needs to be reassured. Dragging the cage, manoeuvring it out the door isn’t easy, but he manages: short of breath, almost impatient, he explains everything: when the cage is out he lowers it to the road and undoes the wicker door. The dog doesn’t move. Perhaps it’s dead, that’s unlikely. Maybe it’s sick. He gets down on his knees to peer inside but it’s too dark, he can’t see a thing. He’s suddenly afraid to put his hand in and he doesn’t have a flashlight; he straightens and leans against the car. If he upended the cage he could shake the son-of-a-bitch out onto the road. That’s a possibility: at least it’s something he might be able to do. Standing against the car he closes his eyes; the dog should appreciate, at least understand that its freedom is being restored, it should, no matter how cautiously, he recognizes that suspicion is natural and therefore desirable, it should at least poke its fucking head out of the cage, it should see what Felix has done, is doing . . .
Maybe he’s expecting too much too soon: opening his eyes he avoids looking at the cage, perhaps it needs a little time, he stares emptily into the sky. Insubstantial clouds. Time passes. He waits with his face upturned until his neck begins to hurt. Then he slowly tilts his face forward, lowering his gaze, the sky is endless, the tops of trees against the stars, their brute mass without detail and then the field, the snowbank and the cage. But no dog. Trying to contain increasing vertigo, Felix hunches to the ground, his voice is desperate, begging . . .
Dragging the cage beside the car. The footing is treacherous, there are ruts, tracks of cars beneath drifted snow, he slides grotesquely but he doesn’t fall, he’s pulling the cage to a spot directly in front of the car, about thirty feet along the road. It’s one thing to do. He goes to the car, turns on the headlights and returns in their glare with his shadow huge and broken on the snow. He crouches to open the cage again, he shifts to avoid the shadow, he doesn’t know what to expect: the white body curls away from him. The head is buried in a corner. He speaks to it purposefully, he demands obedience, is rewarded by a sound, he’s sure there was a sound, he orders it from the cage, it appears the dog is trying to move, there’s tension in its limbs, Felix commands more forcefully, he snarls it lurches trying to turn, it falls, he hears the warning rattle in its throat, can see the gathering spasms . . .
Why does it terrify him?
He scrabbles to his feet, he runs to the car and slams the door. He begins to cough, his chest explodes, his mouth fills with vomit, he opens the door and spits onto the road, he’s choked with rolling spasms in his chest and throat, the contents of his stomach burst from his mouth and nose. Perhaps he’s dying. It happens like this, explosions, treachery inside his head, everything silent, a spike of ice in his chest, the body’s puke dribbling from its nose . . .
He gets out of the car to wash his face in the snow. Kneeling at the edge of the road he rubs until his skin hurts, then he dries it with his knitted hat: he bends to rinse his mouth, it takes more snow than he thought because it melts to almost nothing; he forces his head back, exposes his throat and gargles ineffectually. Spitting thick saliva beside his knee he reaches along his gums with his tongue for chunks of vomit. He spits again. Fresh snow in his mouth and his teeth begin to ache with the cold, he gargles again and spits. His knees are cold, his face is stinging but he doesn’t get up. The snowbank, from where he kneels, rises to meet the sky and since the car is behind him nothing but the stars has any form. They do not move. There are no clouds . . . for an instant there is no distance between objects, no objects, a consciousness, only an idea . . . gradually the impression of the icy night on his eyes, a noise in the distance, his knees melting the snow beneath him, the car cracks mechanically, contracting with the cold but that’s not it. He stands. He has the uneasy sense that something has happened, an emphasis has shifted in some way, nothing is certain: the trees, the sky remain the same, the field’s unchanged. It doesn’t make any sense. Supporting himself against the car he returns to its open door. A light breeze on his cheek, the whine of an engine carried from the highway: it sounds like a truck, he hears the farm dog. Shutting the door, he walks to the cage in the middle of the road and as he expected it’s empty: running easily among the trees, the tireless run of wild dogs, the wolf. He knows it’s too late, but he stares at the shadowy trees, searches the edge of the woods as if for a sign. There isn’t one of course; the landscape contains nothing, it might as well not be there . . .
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